Sending two people to Mars in less than five years is possible. Technically.

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A newly announced and privately organized mission to Mars, dubbed "Inspiration Mars: A Mission For America," intends to give one man-and-woman married couple a round-trip ticket around the red planet less than five years from now, as disclosed in a press conference Wednesday. Though the project shares its space travel goals with no less than President Barack Obama, its details and time frame are getting the side-eye from scientists and researchers for its unbridled optimism.

Inspiration Mars is the brainchild of Dennis Tito, an entrepreneur who paid $20 million in 2001 to the Russian space program to become the first space tourist. The Mars trip he envisions would be 501 days in total, and would fly the two people on board the ship to, around, within 100 miles of, and back from Mars, but would never actually land on the planet.

Forbes points out that the mission has a myriad of hurdles ahead of it. Funding appears to be muddy, and the project is currently without support from NASA or any of the major commercial space exploration companies like SpaceX (though Tito has an agreement to develop tech with NASA). The spacecraft for the mission has yet to be designed and is a collaboration with Paragon Space Development using current space technology.

There is also the minor issue of finding a pair of payload human beings who not only mind eating nothing but dehydrated food for almost a year and a half, but will be able to bear the psychological burdens of virtual isolation for the same period of time, such that neither kills the other or themselves. Forbes' sources estimate that the trip will cost $1 billion, give or take a few million. For its part, NASA isn't planning to send carbon-based life forms out to Mars until the decade after next.

Tito hopes to set the craft on its course to Mars on January 5, 2018. If all of those elements can come together in that time, well then, the plan is foolproof.

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Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston